How Comedy Bang! Bang! Took the Tonight Show's Place as a Comic's Dream Gig

The path to stardom for comedians is not as clearly defined as it used to be. While many still go the route of the open mic standup scene to get started, there are also improv theaters, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, podcasts, and so on. But producer, writer, actor, and Comedy Bang! Bang! host Scott Aukerman had a unique path through comedy before many of those alternative routes existed.

From performing in musicals to writing for HBO's Mr. Show to hosting the original iteration of his podcast as a stage show then called Comedy Death Ray, Aukerman has spent the majority of his career as someone who has helped others achieve fame. Thankfully, in doing so he also helped himself by building a brand that has a reputation for revealing the cutting edge of comedy today. He's done so well, in fact, that Aukerman was able to turn his Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast into a TV show of the same name in 2012, the final 10 episodes of which will begin airing on IFC on October 28.

Esquire: You made 110 episodes of Comedy Bang! Bang!, which is an especially incredible milestone what with so many different options for viewers these days. What does the century mark mean to you or the industry in general?

Aukerman: As long as we still count numbers on the deca system using 10s as the base, multiples of 10 still seem very impressive. I think what it does mentally is it looks like a real thing. Any time someone says, "How many have you done?" I can say 100 and people are impressed by that. It seems like it's an achievement. It's not a couple of seasons and went away, no we did 100 episodes and made our mark, however small, on TV. At least it was lengthy!

The Comedy Bang! Bang! TV show is coming to an end this year. How did that decision come about?

I sort of had a feeling that season five would be the last season. Just because I know our ratings and in season four we weren't setting the world on fire, nor have they ever. I knew it was kind of a niche show and one that was profitable for the network but just wasn't one of their bigger hits like Portlandia or Documentary Now. So I kind of had a feeling that it would probably be the last season; I asked them to let me know one way or the other pretty early on in the season so that we could plan for the end, which they did so we were able to put together a really satisfying conclusion for it on our terms. But it was a really amicable and I can't even really say if I would have done a season six if there had been a desire. It's pretty much almost a mutual ending of the show.

What do you think the legacy of the CBB show will be?

I was talking to Bob Odenkirk when we got picked up for season three and he was saying "Well, congratulations, now it's a real thing." Because if you do one season of a show and then it gets cancelled, it's almost like you kind of tried an experiment that didn't work. If you do two seasons and it gets cancelled it's like "That was a short-lived show." But when you do a third season and beyond it's a real thing and kind of has a legacy and impact and there's enough episodes there where people can really dig into it and really get into it. I'm grateful that we had as many episodes as we had; 110 is just kind of insane, especially considering that 60 of them were in the last year and a half. Honestly, I'm glad that we ended while we're still good too. That was kind of one of my fears of doing a season six was we were sort of getting into where you're at kind of late into a TV show's run where you're pitching ideas and saying "Oh no, we already did that." At one point a writer pitched an idea and I said "Not only have we already done that but you wrote it." It's a really strong end to the show whereas I think the season five episodes are the best we did. Some would say, "Well why not continue that and do a season six if you're still so good at it?" But I really didn't want to do another season if it was gonna dip in quality.

With the experience you have directing Between Two Ferns and putting together specials for the internet and what have you, do you think there could be a future for Comedy Bang! Bang! the show in that regard?

I said on Twitter that the sooner we end it, the sooner we can get to the reunion. And that's where all the real money is: the reunion five or ten years down the line. I do think there are opportunities to do some stuff with Comedy Bang! Bang!. Look at Bob and David doing With Bob and David, 17 years after Mr. Show. The only thing that's standing in our way is that we tore down the set. So we'd have to build that again. A few years down the line, we could just hop right back into it like nothing had ever stopped. That's sort of the unfortunate part of being on network TV is the regular cycle of everything. Curb Your Enthusiasm can take seven years off and then come back but when you're on one of the more traditional networks you have this yearly schedule and you can't just take a break for a year and then say, "We're coming back after that!" Because it seems like you've lost momentum. But I do see kind of a world where three years from now we just go "Hey, we're gonna do another season and come back" so who knows.

The sooner we end it, the sooner we can get to the reunion.

Were you amazed by the freedom you had on Comedy Bang! Bang!?

Yeah, but I also think it was earned. The first season we had a lot of discussions about what the show was going to be. The network came to the set for the pilot and I think came maybe a day early on during the shooting of the first season. But by the middle of the second season we essentially stopped getting big notes. We'll turn in the scripts, and they'll maybe voice a few concerns and we'll talk about it. I'm not one to be like "Whatever a network thinks is stupid and whatever I think is right." I enjoy hearing it. It's funny, I was watching CNN recently and they were talking about what Donald Trump said about the second amendment people and Hillary Clinton and a former NSA director said "At a certain point you're not only responsible for what you say but for what people hear." And that's kind of true in comedy. As much as I can believe that something is a good joke, and I know one-percent of the people who are exactly like me will love this joke, you're also sort of responsible for the fact that 99-percent of people aren't liking it. There's a balance.

You're essentially doing improv every week on the podcast and basically just did a live improv show on the CBB tour. Do you have any formal improv training?

I don't really have an improv background, which I always feel was unfortunate in a way. I think when the UCB started out here in LA, I kind of felt like I was a little too established. I was the first sketch teacher at UCB for one class. I had Neil Campbell and Paul Rust in my class. And what I do, I feel like I'm not great at like classic improv, so when people say "You're really good at improv," I kind of feel embarrassed. I'm good at one very unique style of improv which is improv in an interview situation, which is something that I kind of learned how to do from the 2000-year-old man CDs.

I think it's introduced people to really great comedians who would be successful either way maybe but their gateway to them is through my show.

You've said before that The Tonight Show doesn't move the needle anymore as far as launching comedy careers like it used to. Does Comedy Bang! Bang! get to carry that torch now, what with people like Lauren Lapkus, Paul F Tompkins, Nick Kroll, and dozens more first being introduced to thousands of people via your podcast?

I think that my show definitely has a reputation for introducing people to new talent. The lesson I learned pretty quickly, and this dates back to Comedy Death Ray, is that you can't just use the same talent all the time. I would look at competing comedy shows that were on different nights around LA and they found their comedians and just stuck with them. And the comedians would age and the audience would age and they became just sort of like talking to the people who already were fans. So I always made sure to invest in young talent and at the Comedy Death Ray show we would always have really big names like Louis CK or Bob Odenkirk performing with people that no one had ever heard of before that I was really passionate about. I wasn't like aiming for, "This is gonna be the greatest standup show you'll ever see with the biggest names!" I was aiming for "These are the funny people that I really like." So that's what I try to do with the podcast. I think it's introduced people to really great comedians who would be successful either way maybe but their gateway to them is through my show. And I really want to continue to do that because once I've introduced them to people and they get really popular and they also through their own talents get their own TV shows or they get to write on TV shows and get really busy so I can't use them anymore because they're just not available to me. It's really important to me to constantly introduce new people and see all these younger people from UCB or Groundlings or Second City who are finally ready. They have enough training. When I can unleash someone that I've just found out about like a Tim Baltz or a Drew Tarver or Betsy Sodaro or Jess McKenna or Zeke Nicholson and just go "Hey here's this person, you're gonna love them!" it's very, very exciting to me.

We have no idea really what the future of podcasting will look like because the format is so new and basically self-sustaining. It's not like there's a time when anyone will tell you that you can't do your podcast anymore, so could Comedy Bang! Bang! be like a 25-year show?

It's bizarre to me that I'm still doing the podcast at seven years in. I assumed that we would never be able to do it this long. But I still feel so passionate about it and I feel like we're putting out great shows so that's what gives me the motivation to do it. I was thinking about it the other day going "Maybe 10 years is when I stop?" But then again maybe I stop at eight years or something. I really don't know. 25 years down the line there will probably be something invented that totally changes the game in a new way, but I think comedians and entertainment companies in general are gonna keep being able to make stuff. I've had a career where I was trying to make money putting on shows at theaters and now it's an interesting way to try to figure out how to make money making podcasts and TV shows. There will always be something interesting going on.

You have to make friends with the people around you who are doing the same thing.

You know a lot of comics, do you think there is no set way to make it in the business? Or is there proper advice to give a young person wanting to get into comedy?

There are basic tenets. The ones that I tell people are: If you don't live in a major city you have to move to a major city and you just have to do whatever it is you want to do all the time. People want to know the one specific path so that they can follow it exactly. Like "the secret" or "the trick." You hear a lot about people saying "Oh well I would move to Hollywood but I don't know anyone famous and Hollywood's all about connections so I'm never gonna make it." Well, I didn't know anybody. Or people saying, "Well, I don't like a certain school so I'm not gonna make it in Hollywood because it's run by this one improv school" or something. No, there's so many ways to do it. You have to make friends with the people around you who are doing the same thing. And don't be an asshole. You have to be someone cool that people want to work with. Those are the basic things. Or do what I did which is just doing weird half-written, half-improv bits in the middle of a standup show. And then also try to write. There's so many different ways of getting into comedy but as long as you do those first four things -- and you have talent -- you'll be alright.

It seemed like after Between Two Ferns interviewed Obama, there was no topping it, but interviewing Hillary Clinton during an election cycle may have been even more heightened. What's next? Can you take it even further than that?

There's always a temptation when you're doing anything to try to top yourself. And I think that sometimes you have to really try to resist that because bigger isn't always better. To tie it back to Bang! Bang! and the finale, that was something we thought about a lot in regards to other finales of other television shows. Bigger isn't always better. Some of the finales, they try to make it these massive things with incredible guest stars, we didn't really want to do that and we wanted to do something that was more like a regular episode. So I think about that with Between Two Ferns sometimes where we did Obama and then some people say, "There's no way you can top it!" Well you don't always have to top everything, you can just put out a funny thing. We put out a Brad Pitt episode after it which was really funny. How funny would it be to follow up the Hillary Clinton one with just someone like Thomas Gibson from Criminal Minds or something. Someone super boring. The third lead from CSI: Miami. Don't worry about topping yourself, just be consistent and put out a good product.

What would you say to someone who dreams of being on the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast?

If that's someone's dream, God bless them. I had my own dreams, I had a very specific dream of wanting to be on Letterman. It never came true but your dream can never come true and you can still have a good career. I'm living proof of it.

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